Frank Rich makes a great point in my short video interview with him, which you need to go watch. The GOP is now virtually an all-white party, and being an all-white party in the United States of today is an unmitigated liability.

The party hasn't had one non-white federal office holder in several years - not one. John McCain is going to get maybe 5% of the black vote, perhaps 25-30% of the Latino vote, and maybe a slightly larger percentage of the still-small Asian vote.

America is just getting more and more racially diverse. It's about 68% white now (we'll have an exact figure at the next census in 2010). But look at it this way. In eight years' time, given the way we elect presidents via the electoral college, it won't be possible - I mean won't be possible - to get 270 electoral votes if you're still this white a party. The big electoral-vote prizes are states that are increasingly racially diverse (and mark my words -- under the right circumstances, even Texas may be a Democratic state in eight years). The older white states are small.

That means the GOP will have to change its outlook on immigration and on civil-rights types of questions. But if it does that, it won't be the GOP anymore.